


goblin pulp and goblin dew

by Sarah T (SarahT), SarahT



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 17:52:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9560324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarahT/pseuds/Sarah%20T, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarahT/pseuds/SarahT
Summary: Every night a danger night.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the Spike for the beta.

In the circle of the lamplight, snowflakes swirling down, and a dark figure crossing, collar turned up against the cold.The black car waiting further down Baker Street.Sherlock must have seen.

“What are _you_ doing here?” he asks, nonetheless, closing a desk drawer.

“I caught a glimpse of your friends’ rota,” Mycroft says.“They seemed to be under the impression that you might actually go to bed.”

A brief smile.“They mean well.”It vanishes.“Get out.”

Mycroft hangs up his coat.

  


Sherlock is stretched out—carefully, very carefully, bruised _rectus abdominis_ and intercostals and no painkillers—on the sofa, robe pooling around him.He’s been pointedly ignoring Mycroft, standing at the window, for nearly an hour. 

Mycroft has the patience to watch and wait longer than almost any man alive, but it is already 11:37 pm, he’s worked out the mathematics governing the frost on the windowpane, and he knows he is not going to sleep tonight.

“I stayed out of it,” he says, without turning around, hating the way it still sounds like a plea.

He lets the rest of it hang in the air: _I let you bury yourself alive in these rooms and flood your brain with poison.I pretended to everyone, including the entire national security surveillance apparatus, not to know what was going on.I stood by while you were admitted to that hospital, knowing full well what Smith was, what he would try to do._

_I left it to John to save you.He almost didn’t._

Sherlock sighs, the minutest acknowledgement.“Chess?”

  


Nine games: five to Mycroft, four stalemates.Sherlock knocks over his king with a scowl.Mycroft watches the piece roll slowly back and forth.“I can’t concentrate.”

Sherlock’s shivering, and each shiver catches on an injured muscle, sending a shadow of pain across his face. 

“Would you care for some clonidine?”

“No,” he says automatically, and then: “Yes.”

Mycroft reaches for his briefcase.

“Isn’t this just like old times,” Sherlock observes, but without malice.

Mycroft used to watch the footage over and over, hating himself.Sherlock preparing to shoot up was so serious, careful, reverent.Like a choirboy—and wasn’t that the worst possible comparison.Watching him bring the best of himself to his own destruction was _transfixing_.

There have been better and brighter Sherlocks to watch over the past few years.He’s never told him.He’ll never tell.

  


Mycroft brings back tea from the kitchen (five lumps of sugar for Sherlock) and turns on the television.He flips through the channels until he finds an old black and white thriller, set in bombed-out post-WWII Vienna, all canted angles and distorted shadows.He doesn’t ordinarily watch telly, but occasionally it has its uses.At 2 a.m., it’s a remote transmission from a distant galaxy, a reminder that someone else is standing watch, too.

“I hope this isn’t supposed to be a test of my deductive abilities,” Sherlock says.

“If you can’t tell already that he faked his death, I should have you readmitted.”

He sits on the floor, with his back to the sofa.He has a soft spot for grainy old film.Watching it is like dreaming while being awake.The closest he’ll get this evening, certainly.

_“I loved him.You loved him.What good have we done him?None.”_

Mycroft risks a look back over his shoulder.Sherlock’s propped up on his elbow, absorbed.The light from the TV playing over his face makes him look even paler, the spill of blood in his eye starker.

He turns away.There’s nothing to do but drink tea, and wait. 

  


The movie ends.Mycroft is reading a report.Sherlock’s curled up as best he can, drowsy, but an occasional flicker of impatience still passes over him. 

“If you really wanted to help me pass the time…” he finally murmurs, giving Mycroft a look from under his eyelashes.

His mouth goes dry.Not since John and Mary’s wedding night.“Sherlock, you’re in no condition.”

“I think I’m the best judge of that.”

He glances at him. Sherlock thinks he’s about to win; his gaze goes sleepy and expectant.His lips part, just a little.There’s a cut running into the corner of his mouth.

Mycroft returns to the report.“Physical _or_ mental condition.”

“You’ve been trying not to look at me all evening,” Sherlock says, irritated.“Why?”

He turns the page.“Because every time I do, I find myself calculating the cost to the state of raising Rosamund Watson as an orphan.”

Sherlock’s breath catches in his throat.Mycroft compresses his lips savagely, waiting.“But it was my fault.”

He’s so angry it’s as if he’s been displaced from himself, thrown free by the invisible shockwave to look back and watch as it all burns.

“You’re forgetting, Sherlock, that I was _there_.“

A half-choke of laughter.“The one time I blame myself, Mycroft, you’re actually _taking my side_?”

The question sears.As if he has ever done anything else. __

He looks up.Sherlock’s brow is furrowed with genuine perplexity.He has to kiss it away.

Sherlock keeps his face tilted down in Mycroft’s grasp, but he can still feel the slight smile emerge.Sherlock wins after all.

  


_Spooks?You’re using spooks to look after your family now?_

  


The flat is filled with a deeper quiet.Mycroft is on the sofa, and Sherlock is fitted against him.He slides his hand along Sherlock’s arm, tracing the outline of the bruise.One of the bruises.

“Don’t, Mycroft.”

Mycroft sighs and wraps his arms closer. 

_Reptile._ Cold-blooded. Stealing the warmth of his environment that he can never produce on his own.

Sherlock locks his fingers around Mycroft's hand, lifts it, looks at it. “You've been smoking.”

He's too tired to think of a suitable lie, so he says nothing.

Sherlock must be tired, too, because he gently presses Mycroft's fingertips to his lips, chasing the ghost of the nicotine. Not quite a kiss.

Mycroft burrows in to wait for morning.

  


Dawn is still cold and grey as Mycroft methodically locates and removes the stashes his agents had missed earlier. 

"This never does any good," Sherlock observes, still on the sofa.

Mycroft flips open a hollowed-out copy of _At the Mountains of Madness_ and empties it."I find the ritual comforting, nonetheless."

A pause.“Strange.”

“What?”

“I must, too.Or I’d find better hiding places.”

They look at each other across the room.Sherlock’s gaze, clouded by exhaustion, glows dim, like an Edison bulb going out.Mycroft feels that warmth again.Stolen.Always.

“Mrs. Hudson will be up with breakfast in three minutes, thirty-nine seconds,” Sherlock says finally.

“Four minutes, two seconds,” Mycroft corrects him, and picks up his umbrella.


End file.
